The connectivity, availability of information, and ease of access to social media sites and services offers users enormous benefits, but can also result in publicly accessible documentation of less than flattering behavior or expression. Descriptions of how text, image, video, and even audio posts, have come to haunt individuals with at least momentary lapses in discretion, are pervasive and continuous.
Perspectives, judgment and opinions of young social media users may change from their time in high school and college, until they begin to enter the workforce or seek to take on responsibilities and roles for which evaluations and scrutiny are applied. Employers often search social media sites such as Facebook™, YouTube™ (YouTube™ video community is a trademark of Google Inc.), LinkedIn™ (LinkedIn is a trademark of LinkedIn Corporation and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries), Twitter™, as well as other forums, blogs, galleries and chat sites, to possibly obtain additional information on prospective applicants, not readily available in resumes or interviews.
Social or benevolent organizations may screen new members by using searches of social media sites to obtain insight into membership applicants. College admissions may also view online social media sites hoping to find indications of potential behavioral or other risks, and avoid future issues by screening-out applicants based in part on publicly available social media postings.
Most social media services and sites provide privacy settings to control who is able to have access to posted materials, however many, if not most, social media users fail to take full advantage of these settings. In other cases, posting of compromising images of one person may be posted by another person with non-damaging intent, but public sharing of the image can result in damaging consequences at a later time.
Users having experienced impact of a social media posting may reconsider the posting if the potential consequences were known or implied before hand.